Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The Power of Sanctity...

"A couple weeks ago I was reading Seven Storey Mountain and came across a passage where Thomas Merton talks about the beginning of World War II, and says in passing:

If I had accepted the gift of sanctity that had been put in my hands when I stood by the [baptismal] font in November 1938, what might have happened in the world?

In the context of that section of the book, it's clear that he was basically asking, Could I have stopped the war? At first I hardly noticed it, thinking of it as a poetic hyperbole to drive home the point that we should all try to be holy. A few pages later, however, that sentence still nagged at me. I went back and re-read it, as well as the paragraph that followed:

People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell. The saints are full of Christ in the plenitude of His Kingly and Divine power: and they are conscious of it, and give themselves to Him, that He may exercise His power through their smallest and seemingly most insignificant acts, for the salvation of the world.

Intro

This a blog run by the Seminarians of the Diocese of Sacramento, CA. Coming from a variety of backgrounds, we have all come to discern a calling to become priests in the Catholic Church. Feel free to follow along in our journey to this great vocation. Questions welcome.